


Mallrats

by Kypros



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Flirting, Coffee Shops, Crushes, F/F, Friendship, M/M, People Watching, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Friendship, Starcourt Mall (Stranger Things) Was Not Destroyed, Steve is all sorts of bad with dealing with his crush, Twenty-something Mallrats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 02:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20613602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kypros/pseuds/Kypros
Summary: "Isn’t there a better way for you to tell me that you like me and that you’re sorry for what happened in high school? Other than calling out a number at me in public or writing shitty porn featuring your self-insert?” Jonathan snaps.Silence. Steve looks thoughtful.-Or: a twenty-something Jonathan gets catcalled walking through his hometown mall in Hawkins, Indiana. What he discovers is a pair of perpetual slackers who he may or may not remember from high school. Bad pick-up lines and burgeoning albeit awkward friendships follow. And coffee. So much coffee. At least Steve's hair is nice to look at.





	Mallrats

**Author's Note:**

> The timeline is iffy and the whole "monsters from an alternate dimension thing" never happened. Don't take any of this too seriously - this is just pure self-indulgent speculation I wrote (while working on the plot of "summerland") on how things may have gone between Steve and Jonathan if there hadn't ever been any Monster Hunting ™ shenanigans.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon, and Jonathan Byers is late.

He’s not ordinarily late. On the contrary, he prefers to be early if he can help it. But on this particular occasion, a faulty alarm clock and a dead car battery that required him to call Hopper for a jump had conspired against him and he’s running thirty minutes behind schedule. The flow of shoppers through the Starcourt Mall courtyard that he regularly cuts through in order to get to the photo lab is not especially heavy today (thank _god_), and he’s power-walking through the crowds, focused only on keeping his heavy bag of camera equipment from jostling around too much when he hears a voice.

“Ten,” the deep voice says lazily. While loud, it’s clearly not intended to carry much beyond the person who spoke it, but somehow his ears catch it through the general din of the midday mall crowds.

The voice sounds familiar, jarringly so.

Jonathan turns, despite the silent shrieking from his brain to hurry it up already. He’s just passed through the large open-air courtyard in the middle of the mall, filled with people streaming in through both directions. Theoretically, the voice could have come from any one of them. He sweeps his eyes over his fellow mall-goers and looks around.

_There_. At one of the white-topped tables dotted throughout the courtyard near the coffee shop. There’s a man, with impossibly voluminous hair and a smug looking smile and he is unmistakably looking straight at Jonathan, as are the eyes of the darker blonde-haired woman seated next to him. He looks familiar, Jonathan thinks, but he can’t quite place from where he might know him from.

His heavy bag of camera equipment, however, is threatening to dislocate his shoulder from his body, and he _really_ has to go, like _right now_ if he’s going to make it to work on time.

_Except this asshole is just sitting there, judging people, _Jonathan thinks.

Cursing himself, Jonathan strides toward to the table instead.

The woman gives a little gasp when she sees him coming towards them, and says something quietly to the man beside her. She’s giggling by the time he reaches the table, and continues to stifle her giggling as he stands in front of them. Neither of them seem to know what to do with the impending confrontation, and Jonathan almost considers turning back and running away. He could pretend this little incident never happened, he thinks—he could dip and divert and pretend he was heading to the coffee shop—but instead, he coughs awkwardly, trying to get their full attention.

The man with the soft albeit perfect looking hair looks straight at him and tilts his head.

“Yep,” he remarks slowly, in the same drawling voice Jonathan had heard earlier. “Definitely a ten. What do you think, Robin?”

“I think a six,” the woman says, her giggling fit coming to an end. She shakes her head and grins. “A very solid six, though.”

A warm flush instantly spreads across Jonathan’s cheeks.

“_Uh_,” is all he can say. Was this how women felt like when they got catcalled? “You’re talking about me like I’m not here. _And_,” he adds flatly looking directly at the guy with the nice-looking hair. “What your doing is rude.” Extremely rude, actually. And sort of...weird.

Good-looking hair man and—Robin?—exchange brief glances.

“We’re sorry,” says the woman, still grinning widely. She straightens herself up and tries to look serious, despite the fact that she had been incessantly giggling mere seconds ago. “It’s based purely on aesthetic value. You can appreciate how people look, can’t you?”

Jonathan blinks and sighs, mulling over her response.

“Then...okay. _Fine_,” he says, pinching his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “But why did you say ‘ten’ so loudly?”

Robin nudges her companion.

“Told you were being too loud," she hisses.

“It’s not my fault you’re hard of hearing,” he mutters back, slouching into his seat. His gaze fixes on Jonathan with those same dark eyes. “I apologize for, um...being so loud,” he settles on. “Can I buy you a coffee or something to make it up to you?”

“_Ooo,_ smooth, dingus,” the woman—Robin—snickers.

Robin’s friend is...not unattractive. In fact, Jonathan would dare say he is extremely pleasant to look at. It is, however, just past two forty-five, or so says the large ticking clock in the mall’s atrium, and that means Jonathan only has five more minutes to get to work and sign in.

“Sorry, but I...I really have to be somewhere.”

“_Ah,_” Robin says. She looks more disappointed than her friend does in all honesty.

Jonathan makes to leave, but remembers at the last second the question that had originally brought him to the table.

“When you said ‘ten’ before,” he asks awkwardly. “You meant—,”

“I meant that you’re the cutest person I’ve seen through this place all year,” the other man says, giving him a large, broadening smirk. Then, he winks. “See you around sometime.”

As Jonathan turns and sprints towards the photo lab on the second floor of the mall heading towards the escalators, he isn’t sure which is more painful: the heavy camera bag digging into his shoulder, or his bright red burning face.

\---

Robin and the man with the nice-looking hair are sitting at the same table the next day when Jonathan passes through the courtyard, although he gives them a fairly wide berth. He’s still a touch embarrassed from their first encounter. It’s not that the man called him cute...well, okay it is. And it was unexpected, especially considering they were in Hawkins, Indiana out of all places.

Shaking his head, he pushes through the crowd and thinks back. He'd been roughed up and called derogatory slurs too many times to count for being a "weirdo” back in high school, and that was before he even knew he was into men. And it’s not that he minds the attention, but he doesn’t know how sincere the two were being. Did they somehow suspect his sexuality?

Squinting, he doubts it. This wasn’t New York, after all. Nobody here knew about his sexual awakening that had occurred far, _far_ away from home. This was Hawkins. Hawkins middle-of-nowhere Indiana. He supposes it doesn’t matter, because he still can’t help but feel that their remarks were altogether_ odd,_ and probably just some bad joke. He tries not to think about it, and on Thursday, he takes a different route through the mall altogether.

Embarrassment, Jonathan thinks, is apparently a lingering emotion.

The subsequent Tuesday however, the part of the shopping center he has been bypassing through in order to get to work has been cordoned off. One of the ultra-fashionable clothing boutiques located there has become fashionable no longer and is due to be replaced by a chain store. The large, white sign plastered on the set-up metal fencing indicates that it’s going to be a JC Penny. As a result, all the mall-goers are being redirected through to the courtyard, right past the sunny area where the two people he would really rather avoid are sitting.

Jonathan spots them immediately, lounging at the same table yet again. He inhales deeply, clutching his broken camera bag to his chest—the strap, already strained from years of use, had snapped a day earlier out near the quarry. Then, he steels himself to walk past them.

After a two-second count, he coolly marches across the courtyard, avoiding eye contact with everybody, and he exhales only once he’s reached the other side. The weight pressed against him feels lighter all of a sudden, as if his worry had been holding him down the whole time!

Oh, _shit._ No, wait. His bag was gone.

Jonathan turns around, very slowly, just in time to see Robin picking up his bag from where it had slipped from his grasp. She waves cheerfully at him, and nudges the man next to her, who does the same.

_“Oh god_,” Jonathan murmurs. Great.

“Here you go,” Robin calls out to him as he approaches, holding out the bag with the end of it’s broken strap dangling on the ground. She grabs it with her hand, holding it up. “Did this just happen now, or…?”

“Uh, no, it was already broken,” Jonathan tells her. He takes the heavy bag from her, quickly checking the contents for any broken lenses, and when he doesn’t find any, he smiles nervously. “Thanks.”

“No problemo’,” Robin says. She gives her partner another unsubtle nudge. “So, the uh—,”

The man springs to life.

“That coffee is still an offer, if you’re not busy today,” he says, leaning forward. His eyes look...devious? No, that can’t be right.

“Six,” Robin says in a loud whisper.

The man’s shining eyes dart to the left, looking somewhere behind Jonathan. “I’d say five. She’s got style, though.”

“Is this what you do all day?” Jonathan asks, frowning. “Just sit here, and _judge_ people?”

“_Rate_,” Robin corrects him, as if this term somehow made their actions better.

“And not _all_ day,” her friend chimes in. “Sometimes we eat lunch too.” He leans back into his chair again. “So, coffee?”

The offer is..._well_, considering how much trouble he’s been going through to avoid it, shockingly tempting. Jonathan really should leave, but it’s not like he doesn’t have to be at his shift till 3, and he’s curious now.

He gives in.

“Okay, sure.”

The anxious, more cautious part of him really hopes that he’s not going to regret this.

\---

Five minutes later, Jonathan is seated on an uncomfortable plastic chair in the courtyard that the other man had poached from another table, sipping the coffee that said man (he still hasn’t introduced himself yet and Jonathan can’t quite remember what Robin had called him that first day) bought for him. Robin quietly calls out a number every so often, and the man replies with his own rating without missing a beat. How he knows which people Robin is apparently looking at is a mystery to him.

“_So_,” Robin says conversationally in between numbers. “What’s your name, Mister Ten?”

“I thought you gave me a six,” Jonathan replies, taking another sip from his coffee.

She shrugs, popping a large bubble from her pink chewing gum. “Higher ratings supersede. We decided this pretty early on.”

Jonathan fidgets.

“And how long have you been doing this?”

“A while,” the man with the good-looking hair says, taking a long sip from his straw, slurping back his iced tea. “Probably since right after high school, right Robin?”

Robin nods, crossing and uncrossing her legs in her seat as she shifts to watch another person walk by.

“Four,” she says in reference to some unknown entity walking by that Jonathan can’t quite pick out, then she adds, “Since we worked together at Scoops Ahoy that one summer. So, five years then? Six?”

“Seven,” the man counters to Robin’s rating, and then says, “_Right._ Scoops Ahoy. Worst job in the history of jobs. _Ever._” He takes another large sip of his iced tea, the liquid nearly gone and the ice rattling against his straw. Then, he turns to Jonathan with a large, unnervingly bright smile and asks: “So, Mister Ten, you gonna tell Robin what your name is?”

Under the other man’s stare, Jonathan finds himself growing warm again, and lets out a quick: “Jonathan.” The man nods towards Robin, a tiny smirk playing across his lips, as if to say _“I-told-you-so” _and Jonathan feels utterly confused.

“And you are?” he quickly asks.

The man turns his attention back to Jonathan again and smiles, holding out his hand. “Steve. Nice to meet you...again.”

Jonathan takes it, shaking it briefly.

“And I’m Robin,” Robin chimes in. Jonathan doesn’t have time to confused as Robin exclaims: “Seven.”

_“Huh?”_

She points to a tall, well-dressed man leaning against the wall on the other side of the courtyard, talking into his brick of a cellular phone. “That guy. I’d say he’s about a seven.”

“Yep,” Steve says, sucking on his straw. Jonathan wrinkles his nose—the man’s mullet was longer than his mother’s hair—but he doesn’t dare to disagree.

“So, _Jonathan,_” Steve suddenly says, drawing his name out long and slow. “What do you do these days?”

Jonathan blinks, somewhat unnerved by Steve's question, but answers truthfully.

“I work part-time as a photo tech at the camera shop,” he explains. “That’s why I was in so much of a hurry the other day.” Not because he’d been incredibly flustered by the whole ‘ten’ thing. No, not at all.

“Oh, you mean at Camera Craft on the second floor?” Robin quizzes, sipping on her drink.

“Yeah,” Jonathan says. “But…” How does he explain this? “It’s not my real job,” he settles on. “I’m a free-lance photographer,” he tells them, shifting in his seat as though confessing this was somehow embarrassing, although he’s not exactly sure why.

“You any good?” Robin asks.

“Must not be if he’s working at Camera Craft,” Steve quips lightly, and Jonathan frowns, setting down his drink. What an asshole. He ignores Steve’s rude comment and addresses Robin instead.

“I’ve had a few spreads,” he tells her, modestly. If by a few spreads, he meant a 2 year-contract with a prominent magazine right out of NYU, but he wouldn’t tell _Steve _that. “I’m New York based, and I travel a lot, but I've come home for a bit because my mother hasn’t been doing that great health-wise. My brother is away at school, so...she needs someone to check up on her. Oh, and it’s sort of hard to convince your boss that pictures of small-town Hawkins, Indiana is photo-worthy for their next cover story.”

“Hence the job at Camera Craft,” Robin smiles sympathetically.

“Exactly,” Jonathan laughs.

“Must be tough,” Robin says in a motherly sort of way. “Getting the hell out of Hawkins only to be forced back by shitty family circumstances? It sounds stressful...I might even start getting grey hairs like Steve.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Steve says abruptly. The gurgling noise of air being sucked through a straw emanates from his plastic cup. He frowns slightly and pops the straw from his mouth, setting the drink down, completely empty. “I don’t have grey hair, by the way,” he says looking directly at Jonathan. He sounds—and looks—very serious. “It was one hair, _one _time, and Robin found it. But she needs to get her eyes checked."

Robin snorts, muttering a not-so-subtle _‘bullshit’_ under her breath.

“So none at all?” Jonathan asks, ruffling his own hair. At twenty-five, he had already found a few grey hairs of his own, but doesn’t dare to mention it. Steve seemed to take the subject of grey hairs to the extreme.

“_None_,” Steve says again, staring straight at Jonathan. It’s quite disconcerting to be looked at with such focus, but Jonathan is determined not to blush. A part of him wonders if they’re just messing with him. He can’t tell; Robin is friendly, but Steve is just plain weird.

Really good looking too, but weird. And kind of a jerk.

Robin screws up her nose.

“Two,” she says.

Jonathan isn’t sure who she’s referring two, but somehow Steve manages to follow her line of sight and wrinkles his own nose. “Maybe a three,” he offers.

“Three,” Jonathan says suddenly.

Both Steve and Robin look at him with keen interest.

“_Who_?” Steve asks, eyes visibly flitting around the courtyard.

“Uh, no, it’s nearly three o’clock. So, I need to get going.”

“_Oh_.” Steve actually looks disappointed this time.

Jonathan crumples his coffee cup in one hand, tucking his belongings under his arm with the other, and smiles at him. Both of them.

“Thanks for the coffee. And the bag,” he says, looking at Robin. “From before.”

“It was my pleasure,” Robin says cheekily with a little wave. Then, as he turns to go, he hears: “_Wait!_”

“Did I forget something?” Jonathan asks, puzzled.

Robin elbows Steve, looking embarrassed. “Steve, aren’t you going to…?”

There’s a short, awkward pause before Steve blinks at her. “...ask for his number?” he finishes for her, glancing at Jonathan. “_Right_...oh right. Well he comes here all the time, Rob’. And besides, I already know his number.”

Jonathan frowns, confused. Robin’s brow furrows however, like she knows exactly where this is going.

“_Ten_,” Steve says with a smirk, catching Jonathan’s eyes and sounding extremely pleased with himself.

Jonathan can’t help himself and he rolls his eyes. As he hurries away to the sound of Steve’s quiet laughter and Robin’s audible sighs, he feels a faint blush coming on despite himself.

\---

Tuesday rolls into Wednesday with an uncomfortable swiftness, leaving Jonathan tired and uncertain about the quality of the photos he had developed the night before. He had sent off a couple of the negatives to the editor-in-chief back in New York, hopeful that they could be used for one of the back-page photo-blurbs that _National Geographic_ was so famous for, and then found himself setting off for his part-time job at the camera store. He is not, for the first time in a week, thinking about how to avoid Steve and Robin.

Actually, by the time he strides into the mall courtyard, Jonathan’s thinking about how to ask if he can sit with them again. They..._well_, it’s ridiculous, but they interest him.

Robin is sitting with her back to Steve today, staring out at the crowds, a straw from her iced-coffee perched between her lips. Steve is slouched in his chair diagonally opposite her, and he doesn’t show any sign of seeing Jonathan as he slowly approaches their table with a black coffee in hand.

There’s an awkward moment of silence before they notice, in which Jonathan considers dropping his coffee and running away. It’s an awful lot like lunchtime in high school all over again, and Jonathan twinges, feeling that same sense of deja vu as he looks over to Steve, and wonders why the hell it is that he seems so damn familiar.

“Hey,” Steve says without looking up from his book.

Robin swivels her chair—a difficult task considering the immobility of said chair—but she manages with the nasty sound of metal scraping against floor tile.

“Hey, Jonathan,” she says. “You want to sit down with that coffee?”

Jonathan nods and is about to take the chair to Robin’s right when Steve pulls out the fourth chair at his side of the table to his left, and pats it firmly. He hasn’t even removed his nose from his book in order to do this and Jonathan squints.

“_So_,” Steve drawls as Jonathan settles himself at the table, “You came back.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t feel like explaining himself further than that, especially since he’s not completely sure of the reason why himself. Neither Steve nor Robin seem that interested in an explanation anyways.

Steve tilts his head from the white-covered book with the circular cover-art and he eyes Jonathan’s coffee. “I’m not paying for that one,” he says with a smirk. “It was a one-time offer only.”

Ouch. Again: what an _asshole._

“I already paid for it,” Jonathan fires back, and a little put out that Steve thinks he only came back for the free drink.

Robin sighs from opposite of them.

“Don’t worry,” she says, resting her chin in her hands and rolling her eyes. “It’s nothing personal. Steve is just a bit of a jerk sometimes; he plays this game with everyone.” The corners of her mouth twitch up. “_Especially _with people he likes.”

Jonathan wants to ask her exactly what that means, but at the moment, a fairly large crowd of people drift into the courtyard, quickly dispersing towards the general area of the coffee shop they’re sitting by. Steve and Robin begin rapidly exchanging ratings before their new targets move out of sight.

While they’re occupied, Jonathan sips his coffee and studies the worn-out cover on Steve’s book, finally set down in favour of the flurry of numbers he’s spouting quietly towards Robin. He quickly realizes its a Harlequin Romance novel, the circular motif on the white cover actually a terribly inappropriate image of a busty woman being kissed by an overly muscular, half-naked man with long, flowing hair. It almost looks like Steve’s hair, if he’s being honest, although Steve’s isn’t quite as long, thankfully. Even so, Jonathan can't help but to think _why? _Why was Steve reading this in the mall's atrium? With people around. And children.

When the last of the crowd disappears from sight in the direction of the car-park, Robin relaxes into her seat with a tiny sigh.

“There was a nine,” she says happily.

“Eight,” says Steve, picking up his book again.

“_Nine_,” Robin counters.

“Eight.”

“That’s pretty high,” Jonathan says, interrupting their back-and-forth squabbling, taking his attention away the trashy book. “Do you see many people who rate...that high?”

It is again quite unnerving to have all of Steve’s attention refocus on him in the space of a single breath. Flattering, but unnerving. And oddly intimidating.

“Not many,” Steve says casually.

“I used to date a girl who was a nine,” Robin then says dreamily. Jonathan nearly chokes on his drink and lets out a cough. Robin was...a lesbian? Between the two of them, he had never really thought much of their sexuality. In fact, he had assumed they were together. Between their constant bickering and light jabs, they acted pretty much like a long-established couple. And between them, they both rated people, men and women alike, but Jonathan had just assumed it was based purely on...now what was it that Robin had said that very first day? “Aesthetics”. Steve’s eyes, he’s noticed however, are trained in on him, watching him like a cat. “She had to move to San Francisco for work. One of my other exes was a ten, though. She had these gorgeous blue, _blue_ eyes.”

Jonathan swallows a bitter mouthful of coffee dregs from his cup, the contents nearly empty.

“Oh,” is all he can think to say, and can’t help but to think that he’s made it awkward.

There is an uncomfortable pause, before Robin bites her lip.

“Sorry,” she says quickly, “I didn’t..._um_. You don’t care about my old exes. Sorry.”

Jonathan blinks and nearly chokes on his coffee again, shaking his head.

“No, no, it’s not that,” he says quickly, trying for reassurance. "Uh. I just thought you two were..._well_…together."

Robin instantly snorts.

"Me and Steve? No..._never_," she continues to laugh.

"You wound me, Rob’," Steve pouts.

"Ah," Jonathan murmurs, taking a sip of his drink. At least it wasn't awkward anymore. Then, the next thing he says slips out of his mouth like rushing water and Jonathan watches it happen, horrified. “I didn’t think I’d find another person like me here in Hawkins.”

_Shit._

His eyes go wide and he swallows back the last of his bitter drink. Did he really just come out like that? To basically a stranger of all people? In Hawkins?

But if his confession phased either of them, the duo doesn’t let it show.

“You mean a gay person,” Steve drawls and Jonathan turns to see Steve smirking at him almost predatorily, straw hanging lazily from his lips. Jonathan scowls and resists the urge to reach over and flick that stupid smile off his face.

“_Steve_,” Robin snaps in warning, and she turns her attention back to Jonathan. “Anyways, you’d be surprised who around here, you know...bats for the same team,” she shrugs, sending another pointed glance towards Steve. Jonathan isn’t sure if this is another warning for him to watch what he says, but Steve says nothing regardless. She lowers her voice incrementally, almost as though she’s afraid of being overheard. “I don’t know if you remember who Sarah Baskin is,”—and Jonathan nods; she was a few years older than him, but had been dating that jerk Billy Hargrove for a bit back in high school briefly—“but guess what? Gay. Super gay. Moved-to-Canada-got-married-and-adopted-three-kids gays.”

“No shit,” Jonathan whistles, and tries to reconcile the image of the popular, ditzy, mean-spirited Sarah married to a woman with three kids.

“It’s kind of nice to talk about it with someone who isn’t Steve for once,” Robin then adds, ignoring Steve’s indigent look of protest. “He’s heard all about this stuff already.”

“_Twice_,” Steve mutters, chewing on the tip of his straw. He sniffs and turns a page in his book, brushing away the soft brown hair covering his eyes and giving Jonathan a good look at them for the first time.

Oh, wow.

Jonathan tries not to stare, but they’re really quite beautiful. A soft, dark brown speckled with golden flecks near the iris. Only there’s a slight scar that runs just above one of them, white and jagged, and Jonathan’s brow furrows. He hadn’t noticed the scar before, mostly because his hair was always in the way. He realizes that he really wants to take a picture of him all of the sudden, but he deflates when he realizes he left his camera at home today.

Robin must have noticed, because she leans across the table and taps the top of Steve’s trashy romance novel lightly.

“Your brow,” she murmurs.

Steve blink and sits up straight, setting the book down on the table top, turning to Jonathan.

“Hm? Oh...yeah. This. Got into a few fights when I was younger,” he says, pointing to the scar above his left eye. “Some people don’t know when to shut their mouths.”

“It’s a shame,” Robin says with a small smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. “You practically made a career out of it, but you were so bad a fighting. So, _so_ bad. Never won a single one.”

Steve huffs and rolls his eyes.

“Shut it, Rob’: a 3-on-1 fight isn’t exactly a fair.”

“Okay and what about that fight when you got into it with Tommy?” she snickers.

Jonathan isn’t really sure why he did what he does next.

Almost without thinking, he reaches out with his hand and touches the pale line on Steve’s brow, gently tracing it with his fingertips as Steve had done just a few moments ago. He stops at the edge that feathers out into his eyebrow, and suddenly, very acutely realizes exactly what it is that he’s doing.

Shit.

“Oh _wow_,” Robin says with a wide, shit-eating grin. Jonathan snatches his hand back, fighting down the urge to jump up and go drown himself in the mall’s fountain.

Steve, thankfully, just looks amused.

“_Uh_,” Jonathan says nervously. He goes to take a gulp of coffee to hide his own face, but the cup is horribly empty. “I—,”

The clock hanging near the roof of the atrium shows it’s five minutes after he had planned to leave.

“I actually have to go,” he finishes, substituting for whatever he’d been about to babble out.

“Sure,” Steve says. He runs a hand through his hair, messing it up and it falls across his forehead, hiding the scar again. Then, he smiles at Jonathan and Robin’s grin grows ever wider. “See you next time, Johnny-boy.”

_Next time_, Jonathan thinks furiously, ignoring entirely the part of his brain that questions why he’s even thinking about another ‘next time’. And that nickname? Terrible. Only instead of focusing on that, he keeps thinking about how he needs to make sure he leaves on time when he sees them again, because if he keeps it up, he’s not going to have a job to be late to.

\---

A week passes. It’s shocking how easily it becomes routine. One day he’s leaving the house with an hour to spare before work, and the next he’s out the door midday or earlier so he can spend extra time chatting with Steve and Robin.

Jonathan doesn’t have many friends, especially not any in Hawkins. If he can even call them friends. But ‘acquaintances-I-met-when-I-overheard-them-making-remarks-about-my-apparent-attractiveness’ doesn’t have a great ring to it.

He does get around to asking them more questions about their...game...the Tuesday after the scar thing. They just look at each other and shrug, and Steve says something about it having been invented to pass the time when they worked together at the now-closed ice cream shop.

“Nowadays though, I don’t have a lot to do,” he explains to Jonathan, turning another page of his romance novel with his long fingers.

Jonathan frowns ever so slightly.

“You don’t work?”

“Oh, he 'works',” Robin says putting judgemental emphasis on the word 'work'. “Just not as nearly as much as I do. Or you, probably.” She tucks a stray strand of her dark blonde hair behind her ear and sits back before adding, “I’m a nurse, by the way. Night shift at Hawkins General. Which is why I hang out here most of the day.”

She reaches down to grab the black handbag at her feet and opens it to show an ID tag neatly stowed away between a small wallet and a packet of tissues.

“I thought nurses who work night shift end up going nocturnal,” Jonathan comments.

“I get enough sleep,” Robin says, stifling a yawn which might indicate otherwise. “I have to come out here to buy stuff anyways since a lot of the shops downtown have closed, so I might as well talk to Steve for a few hours. It’s relaxing.”

“Sitting and...rating people?”

She smiles.

“People-watching is relaxing. People-rating is fun.”

“Uh huh,” Jonathan says dryly, but he returns her smile.

He starts to pack up his things to leave at a quarter to three, as usual, just around the time another flood of mall-goers pass through, leaving Robin stumbling through her numbers in an effort to keep up. He’s trying to adjust the strap on his brand-new bag—the old one couldn’t be salvaged, sadly—when he notices Steve watching him over the edge of the book.

Jonathan clears his throat.

“Uh...something you want, Steve?”

Robin snickers something under her breath that sounds distinctively like _‘yeah, you_’, but Jonathan can’t really be sure, and ignores her.

“_Actually_,” Steve drawls out, grinning widely. “I’m working tomorrow—,”

Robin snorts.

“I’m_ working_ tomorrow,” Steve repeats firmly, shooting Robin a death glare. "So, I won’t be able to join the two of you. And I was wondering if I might be able to have your phone number. Just in case.”

Jonathan feels confused.

“In...in case of what?” he asks.

“In case I need to hear your voice, Johnny-boy,” Steve says innocently. The devious gleam in his eyes that Jonathan isn’t completely sure he isn’t imagining has returned.

Robin looks between the two of them with an air of gleeful anticipation.

It’s not that he’s entirely averse to giving Steve his number—well, his _mother’s _phone number, thank you very much—but he’s only known the man for two weeks, and he doesn’t yet feel completely comfortable with what might come _after _giving him a direct means of communication between them. Despite, or perhaps because of, the whole scar-touching thing.

“Sorry,” Jonathan says, trying to sound sincere. “I don’t actually know the number at my Mom's place anymore.” It’s mostly true: his mother had a new landline installed a few years ago after her old one kept frying the phones, and while he’d written the number down in his pocket book, he could only ever remember the last 2 or 3 digits. And he might have been able to try and remember the whole thing if Steve _wasn’t_ staring him straight in the eyes like that. It was very distracting.

“That’s okay,” Steve says casually. “I can just look it up in the phone book.”

“It’s unlisted,” Jonathan instantly blurts out. A lie. So much for playing it cool.

Robin lets out the breath she’d been holding in as a half-laugh.

“Get it for me then,” Steve says easily, tilting his head. “For next time.” Jonathan nods and watches the ever so subtle way Robin's lips twitch upwards.

\---

True to his word, Steve’s distinctive presence is absent the next day at their spot in the courtyard. Jonathan takes the opportunity to stash his belongings on his usual seat and sits closer to Robin, whose flow of numbers is quiet and less frequent now that she doesn’t have a partner to bounce them off.

“I could always try to fill in,” he offers. Robin smiles and gently refuses him.

“You don’t have a good enough eye,” she says, then hurriedly adds. “_Yet_. I mean, we’ve had _way_ too much practise at this. _Years_. So—,”

He waves her off, nodding. “‘It’s okay, I get it.”

They both relax somewhat after that, chattering quietly above the buzz of the afternoon shoppers and briefly leaving their table to order second cups of coffee from the smiley teen cashier with her hair pulled into childish-looking pigtails. Jonathan finds Robin very easy to talk to; they share a few interests (especially in terms of music and literature) and they both know how to let a conversation lapse into comfortable silence when there’s nothing left to say.

“Twin sixes,” Robin says through the sip of her coffee.

Jonathan follows her gaze to two identical redheads strolling through the courtyard.

“You know,” he says, watching the twins duck into a book store. “I can’t believe you only gave me a six.”

Robin swats his shoulder.

“It was a really solid six. Wasn’t Steve’s ten enough for you?”

“Well, sure. _Yeah_.” Enough to get him weirdly flustered every time he thinks about it.

“So, what would you give me?” she then asks.

“Seven,” Jonathan says easily, smiling.

“That’s sweet of you. And what about Steve?”

The smile on his face freezes.

“Uh,” he says quickly, realizing from Robin’s innocent look—disturbingly reminiscent of Steve’s—that he’s walked right into her trap. “Steve? I mean…he’s good looking, but his personality is…” Jonathan falters and watches Robin’s smile grow into a smirk, “Well. They cancel each other out. So, it’s hard to judge him properly.”

Robin’s expression registers as both disappointment and bemusement as she opens her mouth to respond to his total cop out, but the only thing she manages to get out is, “Okay, that's bullsh—,” before her jaw slackens and her face collapses into amazement at something behind him.

“What?” Jonathan asks, genuinely concerned.

“_Ten_,” Robin says. She sounds almost reverent. “Oh my _god_, it’s my first ten in three years.”

Jonathan turns to see who has provoked such a strong reaction from her and he’s surprised when he recognizes the face of Nancy Wheeler. She doesn’t seem to notice them, moving purposefully through the crowds and not even glancing aside from her chosen path towards the mall exit. Which is probably a good thing, because if she had, she might’ve noticed Robin gawking open-mouthed at her.

“You’re staring,” Jonathan murmurs, and Robin rips her eyes away from Nancy as she rounds a corner out of view.

“Sorry,” she says, flushing faintly. “_Ten,_ though. She was gorgeous. Can’t believe that’s Nancy Wheeler now. _Wow._.. she grew up and just..._damn_.”

“She is,” Jonathan agrees, but shakes his head. “Gorgeous that is. But not really my type. We dated for a bit in college. We took a lot of English lit classes together...I’m surprised she’s back in Hawkins though. She’s a lawyer now.”

Robin almost looks offended. Hurt even, that Jonathan would suggest Nancy was anything less than perfect.

“You _dated_ her? You’re lying! Wait, wrong question: what _is_ your type then?” she croons. “Don’t answer that because I already know: cool, nice-hair, eyebrow scars, right?” she quips with an evil smirk.

“_Wh_—what?”

“Don’t kid yourself, Jonathan,” Robin says through the smack of her bubble gum. “Steve. You_ like_ him.”

They both stare at each for a few silent seconds, Robin’s flush fading and Jonathan’s cheeks turning bright red in return, when his brain catches up to his slack-jawed mouth.

Shit.

“Oh my _god,_” Robin says, and starts giggling. “You actually do; you want _Steve_.” She cackles as though the concept is the funniest thing in the world, as if anyone liking Steve was somehow some divine joke sent from the heavens. After a second or two later, Jonathan joins her.

How in the world was this happening? How was it that he liked _Steve?_

“You’re awful,” he ends up muttering.

“Not as awful as your crush on Steve,” Robin smirks. Jonathan groans and Robin starts snickering again.

\---

After finishing up their giggling fit, the pair parted ways: Jonathan to this job at the camera store and Robin to run to the Pharma-Save to buy more ear plugs. Her roommate, she tells Jonathan conspiratorially, listens to really bad music during the day sometimes, and occasionally has a horde of bratty young men over to play some crappy fantasy board game.

One the way out, she mentions to Jonathan for the first time that she and Steve are at the mall practically all weekend, not just during normal business hours, and she suggests that he drop by if he doesn’t have anything better to do. Saturdays are the best for people-watching, she tells him, and sometimes they get cinnamon buns from that baking store in the food court.

As it happens, Jonathan really doesn’t have anything better to do.

Truly, he’s not even sure what he used to do to fill the time before. Work his job, check-in on his mom’s anxiety levels, and walk out to the quarry with his camera? Oh, and sit in his old room, untouched since high school, and listen to music, he guesses.

Steve isn't there again when he arrives on Saturday morning, but Robin waves him over wearily. She has dark circles under her eyes and appears to have a coffee cup glued to her hand.

“Rough night?”

She nods and yawns.

“Friday night shifts are never fun. Steve said he was going to be late today, too, so—,”

“Hey,” Steve says, materializing from the crowd next to his normal seat and startling Robin out of another yawn.

“You said you were busy this morning,” Robin accuses. Next to him, on a leash, is a fat grumpy looking cat who doesn’t look at all impressed to be tethered.

Steve arranges himself on his chair and pulls the grumpy cat onto his lap, leash dangling off his leg.

“You brought a cat,” Jonathan says flatly, staring at the fluffy ball of fur in Steve’s lap.

Robin leans forward to get a better view of the cat, frowning.

“Why the hell do you have your 'business partners’ cat?” she asks, clearly unimpressed.

“I was supposed to be watching her this morning,” Steve says nonchalantly. “But Dustin called and said he wouldn’t be home till at least five, so I figured I’d come here.”

“I still don’t understand,” Jonathan says, eyeing the animal mistrustfully. It _was_ cute, but it didn't explain why he couldn’t have left the cat at home.

“Diabetic,” Robin chimes in, and Jonathan turns to Steve to see him making the motions of squeezing a needle with his hand.

“Ah,” says Jonathan. “I mean...that’s nice of you, I guess?” Nice, but strange. Because why the hell did Steve think it was okay to bring a cat to the mall? Probably the same reason why he thought it was okay to read pseudo-porn in public.

Robin snickers under her breath, and Jonathan swears he can hear her mutter “Mother Steve and his boys”. Steve shoots her a pointed glare and goes back to petting the cat. Then, Robin stands and heads towards the coffee shop. He watches as she retrieves her items from the cashier, returning to the table and sliding an iced-tea across the table to Steve, along with a sheathed paper straw.

“Free cookies,” Robin announces to them, setting down a bag on the table.

Jonathan holds up his hand and she tosses the bag underhand to him. They’re chocolate chip and rather crumbly, he discovers.

“Apparently we’re their best customers,” Robin says cheerfully, refusing a cookie with a wave of her hand. Jonathan slides the bag to Steve, who he notes has already opened up his crappy romance novel, and watches as he absently paws at the bag, pulling out a cookie after some fumbling.

“‘_Devil in Disguise: Dark Obsession_’?” Jonathan asks distastefully. It’s a different book from the one he was reading the other day. This time the cover has a woman on her knees, crying at the feet of a man who is staring out across a beach at sunset.

Steve lowers his novel just a fraction of an inch and flashes him a grin.

“You interested in this sort of literature, Jonathan?”

“_Literature,_” Robin scoffs.

Jonathan definitely agrees. Anything entitled “Devil in Disguise: Dark Obsession” could only belong to the trashiest subset of human media output.

“Definitely not,” he says, lips pressed thin. “And should you really be reading that in public?”

“Why not?” Steve frowns, feigning offense. “Peaches here doesn’t mind,” he says patting the cat on its head. “And I’m a true romantic at heart.”

Robin snickers and Steve glares.

“_Besides_,” he says, choosing pointedly to ignore her. “I have to do something with all my free time. It was Robin here who suggested I take up a hobby. _‘Go read a book, Steve’_, you said,” he says mimicking her in a childish voice. “_‘Stop bothering me’_”.

“_Yeah_,” Robin scoffs. “I meant a _good _book. Not the trashy Harlequins your mom had littered around the house.”

“They _are_ good!” Steve tries to defend.

“-_Wait_,” Jonathan says interrupting their bickering. “Do you _actually_ have a job?”

Jonathan didn’t mean to sound rude, but Steve...well. He never went anywhere. Or did anything. In fact, he had mentioned having a job, once, like weeks ago, but had never mentioned going back to it again. And today Robin mentioned him having a business partner, but had used that same judgemental tone of voice she had used whenever she described Steve having to “work”.

Steve blinks twice and claps the book shut, nodding.

“Of course I do,” but he doesn’t seem to care to elaborate any further.

Robin rolls her eyes, shaking her head.

“Steve invested in some upstart computer company a few years ago on the advice of his friend whose cat he’s currently babysitting,” she tells Jonathan, eyeing the purring mass in Steve’s lap. “I called him a dingus and a dumb idiot—now Steve has more money than he knows what to do with.”

_Huh._

“So, what...you live off your investments or something?” Jonathan asks, turning to Steve.

“Some like that," Steve shrugs, taking a sip of his iced-tea. "Profit sharing," he clarifies. “I bought, maybe, like 5 or 6 thousand dollars in company stock originally. The money I was _supposed_ to use to go to school with, actually,” he chuckles. “But I didn’t get in anywhere..._so_. Here we are.”

Jonathan let out a low whistle. Damn. He was almost...jealous.

“So now Steve spends most of his days playing with _children,_” Robin says, enunciating the word ‘children’ in an obviously judgemental way, “And coaching the basketball team at the high school when it’s in season.”

Steve frowns reproachfully.

“You're forgetting the baseball team too," he adds. "And you shouldn’t disrespect my children like that. I’m a very protective mother.”

“I don’t even want to know,” Jonathan says, picking up the last cookie and chewing on it. He licks his lips when he’s done, and he can swear Steve’s eyes flicker to his mouth for a moment.

He dismisses it as wishful thinking, then promptly has a minor mental breakdown at the idea that he might be ‘wishfully thinking’ about Steve staring at his lips.

“Oh, Steve, I forgot to tell you,” Robin says, turning in her chair and making that awful sound of metal scraping on tile again. “I saw a ten the other day, when you weren’t here.” She sighs dreamily. “The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

“_Oh_?” Steve says, sounding genuinely interested.

Robin leans forward, resting her arms on the table. “Jonathan’s ex, actually.” Then her eyes widen and her face melts into an astonished expression. “It’s _her_,” whispers loudly. “Over there!”

Both Steve and Jonathan turn their heads. It was Nancy Wheeler again, in the flesh.

“She’s coming over here,” Jonathan murmurs, a little bit confused. He hadn’t really seen Nancy since they had graduated from university. They had remained friends after their breakup, but then Nancy had got some insanely well-paying job at a law firm, and in between his travel schedule and her long work hours, they had gradually fallen out of touch. The last time he had seen her had probably been close to six months ago, before he moved back to Hawkins. They had shared a brief lunch date before Nancy had to leave halfway through after her pager had started pinging incessantly.

Steve however, curiously pales to a shade comparable to paper.

Nancy approaches briskly, and Jonathan watches as Steve seems to slump deeper into his chair. If he slips any deeper, he would be on the floor next. Nancy halts in front of them, her left hand on her hip, hair curled higher than Jonathan had ever seen it before. Then, through her perfectly painted red lips, she says:

“Long time no see, Jonathan.”

She’s smiling, her voice is soft and warm, affectionately so, and Robin makes a tiny strangled noise.

Jonathan nods, smiling back easily.

“Hey, Nance’.” Nancy nods then turns her attention to Steve, who at this point had practically melted into his chair.

“And isn’t it _Steve_,” she smiles, but the smile is a little more than unnerving, Jonathan notes. Predatory, almost.

“_Uh_,” Steve says, straightening himself up. He clears his throat. “Hi, Nancy.”

It’s fascinating to see him so rattled, Jonathan thinks. And somehow endearing.

“Haven’t seen _you_ in a while,” the woman says directly to Steve, shifting her weight to the hip with her hand on it. Her voice is as powerful as her walk and Jonathan almost wants to snicker—Steve looks terrified.

“No,” Steve admits, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. “Um, look Nancy, you broke up with me, so when I said I'd like it if we could ‘keep in touch’...”

“It was pleasantries,” Nancy smiles, finishing the sentence for him. Jonathan has the distinct impression that the only reason why Nancy came over here was to watch Steve squirm.

“_Break up_!?” Robin squeaks, and immediately looks confused as to how someone like _Steve_ could ever get with a woman like Nancy. Robin calms herself before turning to Steve and asking, “You dated her too?”

The woman—Nancy—grins and answers for him.

“Briefly. Senior year of high school. But I guess nobody really remembers anything about silly high school relationships.” Her grin turns a touch wistful, as if reminiscing, then it resumes its friendly air. She then shoots Jonathan a meaningful look. “So, you're friends with Steve now, Jonathan?”

Jonathan shifts in his seat, unsure of how to answer. Where they friends? Or still ‘acquaintances-I-met-when-I-overheard-them-making-remarks-about-my-apparent-attractiveness’? Before he can answer, Steve answers for him.

“Of course we’re friends,” he says shortly, staring Nancy in the eye. “This is Robin,” he says waving his hand in her general direction. “And you already know Jonathan, _apparently**,”**_—Jonathan catches Steve’s gaze in a quizzical stare. Was that..._jealousy_...he detected? Or was he imagining it?—"Both very good friends of mine.”

Nancy raises a brow, apparently skeptical, but says, “Pleasure to meet you,” offering her hand to Robin. Jonathan sneaks a peek at Robin to see how she’s faring: Nancy clearly doesn’t remember her, but it doesn’t appear to have done any damage—Robin is trying, and failing, to hide a fairly violent looking blush. It doesn’t matter anyways: Nancy is still side-eying Jonathan curiously, as if she was trying to figure out a puzzle.

“What’s with the look?” Steve manages to quip, staring reproachfully at Nancy. He seems to have recovered from the shock of seeing his ex fairly quickly.

“Nothing,” Nancy smiles. “Just that in high school, you and Jonathan—,”

Steve abruptly goes pale again and quickly stands from his seat, shoving his chair back with an awful scrape. The cat in his lap is dumped to the floor and makes a loud, disgruntled howl in response.

“Can I talk to you for a moment, Nance’?” he says with an unknown sense of urgency. “_Privately_?” He doesn’t leave any room for argument as he’s already dragging her—and the leashed cat—away from the table and over towards the water fountain.

Jonathan shifts in his seat, crossing his arms. _Huh._

“That was weird,” he says to Robin, but Jonathan notes that she’s still more than useless: her hands are cupping her face and she’s muttering something about how she can’t believe she didn’t say anything back—she must have looked like an idiot!—and Jonathan simply chuckles.

After a few minutes, Steve and Nancy return to the tables, apparently done discussing whatever it was Steve needed to talk about with her alone.

“_Well_,” Nancy says, still smiling. Her eyes turn to Jonathan, and her smile widens. “I should get going.”

Steve nods, and he chuckles.

“It was good to catch up, Nance’.”

“Yeah,” she says, directing a farewell nod towards Steve. “You as well, Jonathan,” but he can’t help but notice she’s staring at Robin with a lingering smile. “See you around.”

As soon as she’s out of earshot, headed off towards the exit at a swift and steady pace, Robin rounds on Steve.

“You_ know_ her?”

“That’s fairly obviously,” Steve says dryly. He pets Peaches, who still looks irritated after being dumped so unceremoniously out of Steve’s lap earlier and dragged across the floor. “I can’t believe you don’t remember. We were dating when we first started working together. _Remember?_ Nancy Wheeler? _Miss. Priss?_ Love of my life? I told you _all_ about her when we worked at Scoops.”

Robin bits her lip, as though trying to dredge up the memories.

“I remember Nancy,” Robin settles with. “Everyone knew who she was. But I thought you two only dated for like...a month.”

“_A month_?” Steve says, sounding offended. “Try a whole year and a half!”

Robin snorts, leaning back in her seat.

“It’s true!” Steve says, crossing his arms, clearly unimpressed with Robin’s response.

“Why’d you break up?” Jonathan suddenly asks. Momentarily, the table goes quiet, and Jonathan thinks he might have made a mistake in asking. Then, Steve hums and shrugs his shoulders.

“She was...difficult to be with,” Steve finally settles on. “We got into this big fight at this Halloween party during my senior year and...yeah. We got back together, but it wasn’t really the same after that. Then, when she went off to collage, she dumped me.”

Jonathan nods; well, he can imagine. In fact, he knew.

“Same,” Jonathan tells him. “Only it wasn’t some big fight that set us off. More like, I realized I wasn’t that into it.”

“Into_ what?_” Robin pries.

“Girls,” Jonathan tells her and Steve dissolves into poorly concealed snickering. Robin reaches over and hits him across the chest, and Steve straightens up, but his lips are still twitching.

“I guess that’s one reason to break up,” Robin laughs, and then slumps back into her seat, looking absolutely exhausted.

“I need to go home,” she then announces. “I need to go home and sleep for a really long time. My perfect ten has dated not only a dingus, but was wasted on Jonathan,” she moans.

Steve pats her shoulder reassuringly, but is hiding a poorly concealed smirk.

“I should probably bring Peaches back to Dustin’s place anyways,” Steve says. The cat meows loudly again at the sound of her name.

“Are you gonna bring her next time?” Robin asks as they all stand to go, collecting bags and empty cups. Steve shakes his head, a slight frown on his face.

“I don’t think so. The mall security gave me a hard time when I walked in here with a cat on a leash. I had to tell them it was a seeing-eye-cat,” he says tapping his sunglasses that sit perched on the crown of his head.

Robin rolls her eyes, looking absolutely horrified.

“Oh my_ god_, Steve,” she exclaims through a snort. “That’s awful!”

It was. Further cementing Steve’s place as an asshole.

“But it’s sort of funny,” Jonathan chimes in, matching Robin’s teasing grin. “And the cat’s pretty cute.”

Steve beams.

“But not as cute as you,” he then says without missing a beat. He winks then turns, walking away with the grumpy looking cat being dragged along unwillingly on its little legs. Jonathan huffs and Robin snickers: that jerk didn’t even give him a chance to think up a less-than-witty retort.

What an ass.

\---

The next Saturday, after a shift from hell at the photo lab, Jonathan doesn’t get the chance to see Robin or Steve for several days. Most of his time is spent sorting through an explosion of archived negatives that the new high school kid they had hired had accidentally knocked over in the storage room. Then, on Tuesday as he passes through the mall, neither of them are there. He buys a coffee anyways and heads to work. He was then surprised to find Steve sitting in his familiar spot at the table in the mall courtyard when he got off work that evening.

It was just odd, considering how late it was.

He’s sprawled out carelessly in his chair, deeply involved in another one of his bad romance novels, but Jonathan’s pulse quickens when he fails to see Robin anywhere in the vicinity.

“Hey,” he calls to Steve when he’s close enough to be heard. “Where’s Robin?”

“Night shift,” Steve says, sipping his iced-tea. He idly gazes towards a spot somewhere on the other side of the courtyard. “Or getting ready for her date. What day is it again?”

Jonathan settles himself into the pushed-out chair next to Steve cautiously, and chooses not to comment on how Steve really needed to find a real job. At least then he might know what day of the week it was. Instead, he raises his eyebrows. “Date?”

“With Nancy.”

“_Nancy?_” What the hell had he missed these past few days?

“While you were busy,” Steve says casually in response to the unspoken question. “I ran into her outside of work the other day and suggested that Robin might like to see her again. She was surprisingly interested.”

Oh…okay. That was…unexpected.

“That’s great,” Jonathan says, smiling. _Unexpected_, but great. He does, however, wish that he’d given Robin his phone number at some point. Now would’ve been a fantastic time to call her and get more details. Unfortunately, he’s obviously missed the chance, and Steve doesn’t appear to be more forthcoming with any information, so he decides to switch topics.

“You said you met Nancy at work? Where’s that?”

Steve shrugs nonchalantly.

“The library. Well, _actually_, it wasn’t for my real job. That one just requires me to go to the bank and cash a cheque. This is my ‘other project’,” he says with a smirk. “Nancy was at the library doing research into some boring stuff about town land deeds or something. Guess the mayor's office has hired her for some big court case.”

Jonathan raises his brow again.

“Other project?” he dares to ask.

“Oh, I haven’t told you, have I?” His tone turns far more serious, and he closes his romance novel and slides it across the table to Jonathan. “I’m writing my own Harlequin,” he says, tapping the cover. “I had started writing it a while ago as a way to kill time, but I never finished it. That is, until recently, when I was inspired to take it up again. It’s time-consuming work,” he says crossing his arms. “But Robin tells me you took a minor in English, so I figured I’d get your opinion on it.”

Robin’s not wrong, but he also doesn’t remember telling her this. Only that he had taken ‘lots of English lit classes with Nancy’.

“You’re writing a romance novel,” Jonathan parrots in disbelief, although the more he thinks about, the more believable it becomes. Authors are supposed to be...weird. And he can’t imagine anyone weirder than Steve.

Steve evidently takes this statement as an expression of interest, because he starts to talk, more than Jonathan has ever heard him do so before, about his original ideas for the book. “Damsels in distress are too over done,” he says, fixing his gleaming eyes on Jonathan. “Repressed housewife’s—,”

“Are due for a revival?” Jonathan suggests.

“No,” Steve says disapprovingly. “Also too overdone. I thought about pushing for lawyers for a while, but I scrapped that when I learned Nancy was one now. It would just be...weird.”

“Uh...lawyers?” It would be original, at least. Jonathan’s pretty sure he’s never heard of any erotica featuring the legal kind of bars.

“The handsome, perfect-haired prosecutor facing the stunningly attractive defensive attorney, who, in a shocking turn of events turns out to be someone he had a one-sided rivalry with in high school,” says Steve. “They of course, resolve their past animosity and fall deeply in love. But the publisher I talked to didn’t like it.”

Jonathan tries to make sympathetic noises, but fails miserably and it ends up coming out as a snort.

Steve frowns, but continues spouting off the newest ideas he’s had. Jonathan just nods along—romance novels were far outside his usual reading material, but he’s happy to listen. Steve’s voice is low and steady and really quite pleasant.

Halfway through outlining his newest idea to have the love interest be the main character’s secret childhood crush, Steve digs out a crinkled white bag.

"More free cookies,” he says, nodding to the coffee stand and offers it to Jonathan.

Jonathan grabs a cookie and takes a bite, but it’s only when he’s chewing on the crumbly desert does he realize that Steve is staring at him. Smiling.

“Is there something on my face?” Jonathan asks, suddenly very self-conscious.

Steve’s smile melts into a smirk and rolls his shoulders.

“_Nope_,” the other man says, but he leans forward and reaches out towards him. “But you’ve got something right _there_,” he says, and slowly, very softly, his thumb brushes against the corner of his mouth. Jonathan turns a deep shade of red and nearly chokes on the cookie in his mouth, but Steve simply hums, leaning back into his seat. “Cookie crumb,” he explains and licks his thumb. “Anyways: a secret, antagonistic crush stemming from childhood is what we eventually settled on,” he goes on to say as though he hadn’t just done that. Brush the corner of his lips and then lick his finger. Like it was nothing. “I’d like to give you and Robin a copy of the draft once I wrap it up.”

Right. The book.

“Uh…sure,” Jonathan stutters, only vaguely aware that he’s just willingly agreed to sacrifice several hours of his life subjecting himself to reading a trashy romance novel. _You must _really_ like Steve_, his brain sings smugly.

Their conversation turns to other things for the next few minutes, before Jonathan has to sling his camera bag over his shoulder and get back home to cook supper. He waves goodbye to Steve without really looking at him, mind still preoccupied by the gentle way his thumb had brushed against his lips.

\---

Jonathan finds the mall courtyard blocked off to the public when he arrives the following afternoon, trying and failing to avoid the puddles from last night’s violent rainstorm that have pooled on the asphalt outside. His heart warms briefly, spying Steve and Robin waiting for him under the laminated “Closed for Repairs and Maintenance” sign, before he remembers that it’s probably his fault for not giving them his phone number.

He resolves to remedy that situation as soon as possible, but in the meantime, there is the problem of what to do about the courtyard closure.

“The second floor has a news stand that sells coffee near the Camera Craft store,” Jonathan suggests. Robin nods in agreement—she’s wearing a touch more makeup than usual today and a smile that he suspects is mostly fake: not a good sign as to what transpired on her date last night. “I’m not sure how _good_ their coffee is though,” he adds.

“Good enough,” Steve shrugs, so they stroll towards the escalators and towards the tiny news stand near the end of the hall. Jonathan observes, with some surprise, that Steve’s hand is clasped firmly around Robin’s as they walk. The evening must’ve gone worse than he originally thought.

The news stand is tiny, selling mostly magazines and convenience store items, but there is a pot of questionable looking coffee sitting on the counter near the clerk. There are no chairs though, so it looks like they’ll be forced to sit on one of the benches outside the alcove.

Robin pries her hand from Steve’s, reaching for the coffee pot and swirling it around a few times. It looks dark and hours old. Robin smirks.

“Yeah, I think they sell coffee,” she jokes, but pours herself a cup regardless, the brown liquid dripping down the sides of the styrofoam.

“No iced tea though,” Steve says with a frown, staring directly at Jonathan. Jonathan squirms—he can’t really help that they don’t sell iced tea. This isn’t a real coffee shop, after all.

Robin stays quiet until they all have poured themselves a cup of the black sludgy coffee, paid, and are perched on the bench overhanging the closed mall courtyard. There’s not a lot of people up here to watch, but the pair seemed to have forgotten their little game for today.

Then, Robin takes a long unrepentant drink of her coffee and tosses the empty cup across the hall, landing it in the bin.

“It was so _stupid_,” she exhales at long last. “_I_ was so stupid.”

Steve takes her hand again, but she shakes him off.

“I’m okay,” she insists, sounding simultaneously frustrated and grateful. “It was just...so stupid. I got there, and Nancy was really great: beautiful looking. And then we went inside and sat down and I was _so_ nervous, I couldn’t believe that any of it was happening. And then...and then I—,”

She buries her face in her hands. Both Steve and Jonathan quietly wait for her to recover.

“I saw a seven, and I called it,” Robin whispers, sounding slightly horrified with herself.

“You..._didn’t_,” Steve smirks.

Robin nods, raising her head.

“I started people-rating in the middle of a date,” she says, and bursts out laughing.

Steve lets out a chuckle and pats Robin comfortingly on the knee.

“Oh my _god_,” Robin moans when she’s done laughing. “It wasn’t even that bad: Nancy had no idea what I was talking about, but I kept thinking she knew somehow, and she was kinda off somewhere else the whole time. So, it was stupid. And she was the most beautiful person I’ve ever met,” she adds despondently.

“It’ll be okay,” Jonathan tries. He tries to think back to when he and Nancy had dated. The case sounded familiar. “Nancy…gets like that sometimes. Sometimes she gets really distracted with…” Well, in Jonathan cases, it was school. Nancy had always been so busy with classes, and papers, and bar exams… “Life,” he finishes lamely. He sends a look to Steve, as if to say: _help me, you dated her too!_ and Steve in return nods.

“Jonathan is definitely right. It’ll be okay. Nancy was 100% distracted.”

“By what?” Robin moans. “Me and my people-rating?”

“Her court case.”

Robin frowns, clearly puzzled.

“Her court case?”

Steve shrugs.

“Jonathan already knows, but yeah...Nancy got hired by the town to represent them in some crazy court case involving the state and land ownership. She’s been at the library almost every other day.”

Then, Jonathan chimes in again: “Did she pay?”

Robin nods slowly.

Steve sips on some of his now tepid coffee—with a straw, of course—and smiles comfortingly.

“Then she definitely likes you.”

The mood around them picks up considerably from that point on. At least from Jonathan’s perspective, until Steve brings up the book again. Robin, from what he can gather, has heard about it before, but had filed it somewhere in the back of her head under ‘Unimportant’ and ‘Another One of Dingus’s Dumb Ideas’, so she’s being subjected to the same exposition about the new story line that Jonathan had to suffer through yesterday.

She pokes Jonathan in the shoulder and mutters under breath: “It’s almost like he’s channeling Dustin, with all that lame enthusiasm.”

“Dustin?” Jonathan echoes. Oh _right_: the guy with the diabetic cat.

“You’ll meet him sooner or later, but Steve says that you actually already know who—,”

They’re interrupted by Steve, who from his bag shoves in front of them two extremely thick looking manila-coloured envelopes.

“_Wait_, is that the book?” Robin asks.

“Yep!” Steve says with a hint of pride.

“I didn’t realize you were that close to finishing it,” Robin states flatly.

Steve pats the stacks affectionately.

“Last night.”

“_Well_,” Robin says, rolling her eyes. “I guess it’ll give me something to do on night shift this weekend.”

Jonathan personally could do without the manuscript, but he doesn’t think Steve is going to take ‘no’ for an answer.

And he did promise. Sort of. Only because he had been distracted by Steve touching him.

“I put my number here, right on top, in case you finish and want to tell me what you think of it,” he says tapping the envelope. “My _personal_ phone number,” he clarifies. Robin smirks and elbows him.

Speaking of phone numbers.

“I should give you mine,” Jonathan says. Steve whips out a piece of paper from his bag and Jonathan writes it down, twice, ripping the paper and handing one piece each to both Robin and Steve.

Steve hands them the manila envelopes after the shuffle is complete, eagerly tapping his name scrawled in neat letters under his phone number. _‘Steve Harrington’,_ it says. Jonathan pauses for a moment, and tries to think. Now why did that name sound so...familiar? He doesn’t have time to ponder it. Robin tucks her folder under her arm, and Jonathan stows his in his camera bag.

It could be worse, he supposes. Steve could be getting super excited over something like...sports.

There’s no way he’d still be here if that were the case, though. Steve isn’t nearly irresistible enough for him to willingly involve himself in discussions about sports teams and ball handling.

With the thick envelope firmly secured within the depths of his bag, Jonathan rejoins the chatter, pondering when he’s going to find the time to read Steve’s so-called magnum opus.

\---

_The brunette—_really? Jonathan groaned_—blushed a flattering shade of pink, and bit his full rosy pink lips—_that’s two pinks, he frowns—_enticingly. His companion, the one with the perfect hair blushed. “I’ve never been with a man before,” he—_

Jonathan slams the manuscript down on the kitchen table.

He barely resists the urge to slam his face down, too. What kind of person could happily read this? What kind of person could possibly _write _this?

“_Steve_,” Jonathan groans quietly.

It isn’t bad in the way he expected it to be: it’s just that it’s not very _good_. And clearly targeted to an audience that Jonathan would not consider himself a part of. The only thing that’s kept him from just throwing the stack of papers at a wall and quitting is the vague semblance of plot tying together the sexual adventures of the perfect-haired protagonist, who alongside with his lesbian sidekick, bed people of all shapes, sizes and genders in an attempt to forget their long lost childhood crushes and heartbreaks. The last part was something of a surprise, however: Jonathan had always thought these novels were, as a rule, filled to the brim with busty woman and stunningly handsome men, and not much else.

Though there were still a lot of busty women.

The bustiest of them all had been mere moments away from confessing her love to the perfect-haired protagonist when the story had taken an unexpected turn: a new character appeared in the town of Lawkins (Jonathan had rolled his eyes at this) - a shy, young ‘brunette’ man who had returned home to look after his ailing mother. As it turns out, this young man—aptly named “Jason”—had been the protagonist’s childhood crush. The story then recounted their high school years, where the perfect-haired protagonist, embarrassingly named “Reeves” had bullied the other boy in his senior year, breaking his camera. All of course, while sleeping with many, _many_ girls in-between.

By the time “Reeves” is twenty, the story narrates that he realizes he is bisexual and continues to pine after his childhood crush who has long since left town, bitterly regretting all of his horrible behavior.

Up until half an hour ago, Jonathan had firmly believed he was done being embarrassed by Steve, but apparently, he was wrong. The story got worse, delving into explicit sexual descriptions of “Reeves” and “Jason” experiencing their first time together.

He opens the pages of the manuscript again, and peeks at the next few paragraphs.

_“Reeves,” the brunette moaned loudly as his perfect-haired lover knelt between his shapely thighs and lovingly took his engorged manhood into his mouth—_

He closes the pages shut again. Rapidly.

Well, he hopes that Robin gets a good laugh out of this at least.

As if on cue, the phone in the kitchen rings. Jonathan quickly answers it—it’s late, and he doesn’t want it to wake his mother—and fumbles with the receiver, bringing it to his face.

“Read it yet?” the voice says, cat-like and coy.

It's Robin.

Jonathan sighs, throwing all his shame and despair and utter exasperation into one single breath.

“_Yes_.” Then: “My head feels numb. That was...awful. And..._enlightening_.”

Yes, enlightening was one word for it. In fact, Jonathan now knew why Steve had seemed so familiar when he had approached them in the food court that first day. Steve Harrington was his one-off high school tormentor—a name and face he had mostly forgotten since moving out of Hawkins nearly seven years ago.

Robin snorts.

“Mine too. I liked the ending though.”

The ending, where Riley, Reeves sidekick, gets a new girlfriend—a lawyer, no less—and rides off into the sunset with her best friend and his brunette lover? All of them moving to New York? And living happily ever after?

“Of course you did,” Jonathan laughs.

Robin snickers again and then she goes silent for a second, humming. Then:

“Wait, lemme get Steve.”

Steve?

“_Wait, _Robin—,”

He had so many questions. Did they live together? Was Steve Robin’s annoying roommate? And did that mean that Dustin with the diabetic cat was his brother Will’s old friend? All of it was coming together now, and he almost feels dumb for not piecing it together earlier. But he doesn’t have a chance to ask and the receiver goes silent. Then a few seconds later, he hears a muffled sound and Robin’s prodding in the background.

“Jonathan?” the new voice says after a few seconds.

It’s Steve. Of _course_ it’s Steve.

“_Yeah_,” Jonathan sighs. “It’s me.”

“So…” Steve starts off conversationally. Jonathan can tell he’s smirking. Just by the sound of his voice. “Did you like it?”

Jonathan sighs again. This was _not_ a conversation to be having over the phone.

“I’d prefer to tell you exactly what I think of it in person,” he admits. He had many things he’d like to say about the story, none of which he felt were appropriate to talk about over the phone. Like how terrible it was. And how he wanted to strangle Steve for ever writing it.

“I’ll come over.”

Jonathan balks.

“It’s 1 am, Steve,” he tries.

“Yeah, and Robin woke me up because of you. I’m coming over. Don’t worry, I already know where you live.”

Jonathan swallows thickly. It was too late for this...or rather, too early.

\---

The clock on the kitchen stoves reads 1: 42 AM by the time there’s quiet triple knock on his door. Jonathan shifts from the position he’s held sitting at the kitchen table for the past hour, unlocking the front door and swinging it open to find Steve standing silently in the dark.

He’s dressed as though he had just rolled out of bed and driven to his house without bothering to put on real clothes: an old Hawkins high gym tee, sweatpants, a mismatched jacket and a distinct lack of shoes.

There is something to be said, Jonathan decides right then and there as he steps aside to let him into the house, for the homeless look.

“Mornin’,” Steve chirps, surveying the kitchen and turning back to Jonathan with a tired smile.

Jonathan pauses to re-familiarize himself with his scathing review of Steve’s book that he composed mentally in his head over the last 40 minutes or so. He props himself against the wall opposite of Steve, perched on the counter with his legs hanging off the edge, folding his arms.

“Morning,” is all he can manage in return.

“So,” Steve prompts, sitting down at the kitchen table. “What did you think?”

Steve’s expression goes curiously blank. As if he was genuinely hoping for Jonathan’s approval.

“I...I’m not sure if I’m qualified to judge this type of…literature,” Jonathan amends hastily. Shit—why was this so hard? But he had to be honest. “But I really, _really_ didn’t like it. The story was okay...sad, really. But the sex scenes were…I’m not...I mean, I didn’t read them all the way through. It’s not the kind of thing I read,” he finishes awkwardly.

To his surprise, Steve grins.

“_What_?” Jonathan asks flatly, confused.

“I_ knew,_” Steve says, smirking wider. “I knew that you wouldn’t like it.” He sweeps his hair away from his face, looking at Jonathan with sleepy eyes. “You’re predictable that way. But the story...you liked the actual story. That’s good.”

Jonathan isn’t sure how he’s supposed to respond to this. He can feel a flush creeping onto his cheeks. The story was very clearly about Steve. Steve and his unrequited, hidden crush on Jonathan, and his struggles in coming to terms with his sexuality. What made it worse was that Jonathan barely remembered the guy. It had only clicked when he had read the part in the story about “Reeves” smashing “Jason’s” camera in the parking lot at the high school.

“Says the person who sits in the same seat with the same person with the same drink nearly every _ single_ day,” Jonathan deflects.

“You sit next to me,” Steve points out.

“Alright, then.” He’s gearing up for a rant, now that Steve’s made it clear he doesn’t mind hearing his...honest opinion. “Was it necessary to use the word ‘brunette’ so many times? Even in the sex scenes? It was irritating.”

“Would you have preferred I give him black hair?”

“Maybe then he wouldn’t have been so obviously _me,_” Jonathan says in exasperation, slipping off the counter and taking a step towards the table. He points accusingly at the manila envelope, hiding Steve’s shitty ‘novel’. “And you should think about making your protagonist less transparently _you._”

“Write what you know,” Steve says innocently, but his shit-eating grin tells another story.

Jonathan adjusts his condemning finger so it points at Steve. This _asshole_.

“And isn’t there a better way for you to tell me that you _like_ me and that you’re sorry for what happened in high school? Other than calling out a number at me in public or writing shitty porn featuring your self-insert?”

Silence. Steve looks thoughtful.

“Well?” Jonathan demands, feeling a lot less sure of himself than a second ago.

“_Well_,” Steve drawls. “To be fair, you didn’t even remember who I was up until now—,”

“That’s not the point!” Jonathan snaps.

“Well, then there is this,” Steve says standing up from his chair and taking a step forward.

The kiss is soft and agonizingly short, but Steve tastes sweet—like iced tea, Jonathan thinks—but also slightly smoky. The warmth sends a glorious tingling up and down Jonathan’s spine. On instinct, his hand reaches up to cup Steve’s face before it ends, tracing the scar above his brow with his thumb.

_Oh_. Ok.

Steve smirks at him.

“Should I rename the brunette too?”

“To what?” Jonathan asks suspiciously.

“Jonathan?”

“I don’t think—,”

“Johnny-boy?”

“Don’t like that one.”

“John?”

“Absolutely not,” Jonathan says with feeling, but the rest of his argument is cut off by the pressure of Steve’s mouth against his own.

This time, it’s a little deeper, a little more heated, Jonathan’s hands trailing down to Steve’s hips. Steve reacts by pushing him back until he’s pinned between the wall and his own body—his lips part wider, letting Steve slip his tongue into his mouth—and Steve’s fingers twist in his hair, belatedly reminding Jonathan to check if his perfectly styled locks are as soft as they look.

They are.

Jonathan tangles one hand in it, enjoying the feel of Steve breathing hard against him and withdraws for a second before kissing him harder, using the other hand to explore the skin under the hem of Steve’s shirt. Steve lets out a tiny a moan, and Jonathan nearly melts.

Eventually, they come up for air, Steve relaxing into him and inhaling deeply. He lets the breath out in quiet laugh, and says: “You have no idea how long I wanted to do that.” He sounds sheepish. Embarrassed almost. “But I’m too tired for this.”

Jonathan can’t help but to laugh. He can’t see the time on the stove from his position, neck curled so his forehead is resting on Steve’s chest, but he suspects it’s well past two am.

“Me too,” he says, suddenly aware of how ridiculous it is to be doing this in his _mother’s kitchen_, out of all places, in the middle of the night.

“That’s okay,” Steve hums, pressing his cheek into Jonathan’s hair. “I prefer to take it slow, anyway.”

He lets go of him after one last, brief kiss, and yanks his t-shirt back down into place, stepping back and giving Jonathan a smile with his eyes. “I should get home before I doze off right here and now.”

On impulse, Jonathan says, “Don’t go.”

Steve raises a brow.

“If you’re that tired, you shouldn’t be driving,” Jonathan quickly tries to explain, hiding his embarrassment. Smooth.

“Oh, and wouldn’t Robin _love_ it if she found me as one of her patients at the hospital tomorrow,” Steve smirks. Then, he frowns, looking abruptly nervous. “But I wouldn’t want to impose; you—,”

Jonathan signs, rubbing his forehead and smiling at the idiot who thinks he’d be disturbing him after he had him up against a wall about three minutes ago.

“It’s fine Steve. Really.”

After some flustered insistence that it really is fine, he sets Steve up on the couch with some pillows and a blanket from the hall linen closet, and then goes to bed himself.

Muffled footsteps wake up him up five minutes later.

“Not worried about imposing anymore, huh?” Jonathan murmurs, rolling over in the bed to give Steve some room.

“Nope,” Steve says, yawning and sliding under the sheets beside him. “You’re warm,” he adds as further explanation, and curls up with his arms wrapped around Jonathan’s abdomen.

It’s nice, Jonathan thinks, and it’s certainly warm. Then he drifts off to sleep, smiling.

\---

Steve is already gone when he wakes up groggily near noon, but there’s a message scrawled on a piece of paper left sitting at the kitchen table.

_See you at the regular place ;) - Steve_

Thankfully, his mother didn’t see it, or if she did, she wisely said nothing about it.

He dresses quickly, grabbing his camera bag and heads out the door with a lingering glace at the book manuscript lying abandoned on the kitchen counter. God, he should put that away too. Last thing he needs is his mother reading it and asking him who Reeves and Jason are. But he’s not sure anymore whether he wants to burn it or frame it in return for last night. _Er._ This morning.

Their regular spot in the mall is buzzing with the lunchtime crowd, people swarming through and forming a proper queue at the coffee shop. The cashier with the pigtails gives him a thumbs-up and points behind him where he tries to join the end of the line.

“I got it,” a familiar voice says cheerfully.

Jonathan turns to see Steve at their table, holding a coffee out to him.

“Thanks,” he says gratefully, moving over to take it and half-wave hello to Robin, who grins at him. His bag comes off his shoulder to rest at the foot of his chair as he sits down. It’s so much easier than it was barely a few months ago, he thinks, when he hadn’t even known their names.

“So,” Robin says conversationally, looking between him and Steve. “The kitchen.”

To Jonathan’s immense gratification, Steve goes a tiny bit red and he shoots Robin a pointed glare, shrinking into his sit. Which serves him right for telling her straight away anyways.

“Yeah,” Jonathan confirms idly, thumb tracing the rim of his coffee cup.

Then, Robin beams. Actually, she looks ready to burst.

“So...I got a phone call this morning,” she says, hands clasped tightly around her coffee cup. “From Nancy.” Her shoulders start to shake, and Jonathan has the sudden nervous thought that she might really explode, but then she starts giggling happily and says, “She wanted to apologize for not being the best date the other night and asked if we could try it again sometime. Preferably at a restaurant further away from the courthouse.”

“I told you it was work related,” Steve smirks.

“Oh, and Jonathan,” says Robin, after her giggling—and their congratulations—subside. “Now that you’ve made-out with Steve, what do you think? You can’t use his personality as an excuse anymore. You have a rating, right?”

A rating. Ah, _right_: he sure did.

“Sure,” Jonathan says brightly, pretending to think. “I mean, he’s still kind of a jerk. And he wrote porn—bad porn, might I add—about me. So, he’s a good eight and a half, I guess. Maybe a nine.”

Robin smirks, crossing her arms across the length of her chest, and Steve glares at him from over his iced-tea.

“Alright, okay,” Jonathan smirks. “I guess you’re a ten.”

“_Thank _you,” Steve says gravely, but he’s smiling.

Jonathan smiles back, and keeps smiling, even when he’s eventually realizes that he’s late for work. It’s okay though, he’s due for a sick day anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> The computer company Steve invested in was likely Apple. Robin became a nurse not because she was necessarily passionate about the career, but out of functionality and the fact that it would guarantee her a job. Nancy's a lawyer (instead of a journalist, like most people would assume), because she would kill people in the courtroom (and loves to argue). Jonathan is just dumb and it was almost painful to write him not cluing into who Steve was until the very end. Writing self-insert porn is also not the way to woo your crush. Also don't actually try and pass off random animals as service animals: only assholes do that (and Steve is an asshole).


End file.
